KARMA & EMPTINESS IN THE YOGA SUTRA (PART ONE) Quiet Retreat Teachings by Geshe Michael Roach Nov. 28 - Dec. 1, 2002 Diamond Mountain Retreat Center St. David, Arizona Afternoon: Day One ] November 28, 2002 Geshe Michael Roach I think some of you may have read the book called The Garden, and today is the very day that the hero of the story meets the young girl, who turns out to be some kind of Angel. T I thought I’d tell the story about how I learned to cut diamonds. I was already working in a diamond company, but I wanted to learn how to cut them. I looked for a long time to find a teacher, and it was very difficult. Diamond cutting is almost like a secret skill that people don’t teach easily, and for months I looked . no one would teach me. But one day I mentioned to my co-manager . I had a very beautiful, incredible woman who was my co-manager. Her name is Rachel, Rachel (Hebrew pronunciation). And so I told her I had trouble finding a teacher and she said, “Oh, my husband is a teacher.” So we made all the arrangements and I went to the place. They work a lot on Sundays because Saturday is the holy day. And so it was a Sunday morning in Manhattan, and mid-town in the diamond district was all shut down. I remember going to this dark elevator and up, I think about fifteen floors, and then into this room. And you pass through a lot of security. And then I came in and it was incredible, it was a dark room, almost all the lights out, the windows are covered with this gray powder, and this beautiful man met me, and his name is Schmuel, Shmuelof, and he’s Israeli. He is not a big man but he was a boxer, before a diamond cutter, for the Israelis’ Olympic team. And then later he was a sergeant in the army, and during the Seven Day War he fought. And I think all this changed his mind and he. he is a very warm and extremely gentle man. And so he took me right in and he said, “Okay Michael (Hebrew pronunciation throughout), this is how we do it.” And he pulled out a stone from a special box, and . if you’ve ever seen a raw diamond, they don’t look much like diamond. It looked like a potato —small, and it was olive green, like army green. And he said, “We’re going to start with this stone.” And I said, “How big is it?” And he said, “Three carats.” And I said, “Schmuel, I don’t know anything . a three carat diamond could be worth fifty or one hundred thousand dollars.” And he said, “Don’t worry.” And so he put this little lumpy thing in my hand and he pulled out a thing called a tang. Most of the words are from Amsterdam — Dutch, and he said, “This is a tang.” It means a “tongue,” and it’s a holder, like a wooden stick, with two legs on the back. You put the diamond in the front, and there’s a bowl of lead, called a dop. Diamond cutting hasn’t changed in about three hundred years. So he said, “First Michael, we’re going to put ze diamond in da dop.” So I said, “Okay.” 2 Then he got a blowtorch and he put it on the lead and then he said, “Okay, stick the diamond in the lead.” It’s like a Jell-O now. And he said, “Don’t hold it; just touch it and take your hand away.” But I was too slow and I burned my hand. But the diamond goes in the lead and then it cools. And then there’s a huge iron table. It shouldn’t vibrate at all, so it’s made of heavy cast iron, and in the center there’s a wheel turning like an old phonograph wheel, about a thousand rpm’s. And then, he showed me, you put the tang in your hand and you hold the diamond down on the wheel. First you take some special secret oil that your wife has made. It’s usually olive oil and ten other secret ingredients, and you put in crushed diamonds, powder — you crush the diamonds in a little pestle, and then you wipe the diamond grease — the diamonds and the grease together — on the wheel as it spins. And then you hold the diamond down. So he said, “Hold the diamond down.” And I held it down and it, and it screamed at me. It went WHAAAAAAA. [laughter] And I jumped and I said, “I think I broke it Schmuel.” And he said, “No, no. Don’t worry. Press it harder.” And I said, “It will break.” And he said, “Diamonds don’t break.” He pushed it down into the wheel and it’s screaming. it sounds like subway brakes. And the whole room is screaming and reverberating with the scream . and then I pick it up and it’s glowing like a red-hot coal. And I said, “Schmuel, is something wrong?” And he said, “No, no. Push Michael, push.” [laughter] And I, I held it down and it’s jumping in your hand. It’s fighting against you. And the wheel is spinning and there’s little dust flying off, and he said, “Okay, now, pull it up and look.” And you hold a special glass in your right hand, or if you’re left-handed, the opposite. And then you flip the holder up like a high-school cheerleader’s baton — it’s a skill. [laughter] And then [laughs], and then you flip it up to your eye and you check it. And there’s a tiny little — tiny like a needlepoint — little smooth part on the potato. And he said, “See, you’ve got a whiles to go.” [laughter] And so I held it down again and it screamed again. It’s very nerve-wracking for hours, this thing is screaming at you and it’s fighting against you and the wheel is jumping and your hand is shaking and the thing is red-hot, gleaming with fire, and little sparks sometimes flying off all over in the dark. And it goes like that for hours — you’re fighting this diamond against the wheel. And then maybe, if it’s a hard diamond, maybe an hour later you have a little window cut into it and you can see inside and you can start to plan how to shape it. So you fight like that day after day — I mean a hard diamond can take a couple of weeks. And sometimes, if it’s really hard, you’ll put a lead weight on the tang and you’ll go into the toilet and have a cigarette or something, and you come back. Sometimes it hits a soft spot and the diamond is gone. [laughter] But it’s fighting, fighting, fighting. And then finally we got to the end. He taught me day after day. We did it all at night and on Sundays. Maybe a month later I had a pretty nice diamond. He used to check them every 3 Karma & Emptiness in the Yoga Sutra: Part One Afternoon Day One – Geshe Michael Roach half hour or so and he would bend his head like that and say, “Oh, very good Michael,” meaning all the angles are crooked. [laughs] And then I finished and it was all dirty and black and burnt. I said, “Schmuel, it doesn’t look much like a diamond.” He said, “Oh, come with me.” And we went over to the window, and there’s a hot plate with a pyrex beaker on top of it, and its boiling. And he says, “Drop it in there but don’t touch it. It’s nitric acid.” And you boil the hell out of this black, burnt, scorched diamond. And, and then it gets a little cleaner, gets pretty nice. You pull it out with some special tongs. And then I said, “It still doesn’t look much like a diamond, Schmuel.” He said, “Oh, Michael, not to worry. Come over here.” And we threw it in a vibration, ultra-sonic cleaner. And then finally I pull it out, and I look at it and I say, “Schmuel, that’s not my diamond.” And he said, “What’s wrong Michael?” And I said, “It’s not green anymore. It’s pure white, beautiful, blue white.” It’s also about one-tenth of the size it used to be. [laughs] I say, “What happened?” He said, “Oh, that’s why I gave you a Congo River Green.” I said, “What’s a Congo River Green?” He said, “It’s a big hunk of worthless diamond. We use them in oil well drills, usually. And if you’re lucky, in the very middle you’ll run into a little tiny patch of a pure diamond. And you can have it. I mean it’s worth about fifty bucks now and your labor for the last hundred hours or so works out to about ten cents an hour. [laughter] I don’t think you should be a diamond cutter, Michael.” [laughter] And I put that little diamond in special papers that we put them in and folded it up, and I carried it around for months in my shirt pocket, like the big diamond dealers do, just out of, you know, bragging and like, “Oh, its nothing.” And every time I met someone, after about five minutes I’d bring the conversation around to my diamond and say, “Oh, I have a diamond right here.” And I’d open up the paper, and it’s all greasy now, but that beautiful, perfect little diamond was right there.